Global Aviation Safety, Monitoring and Response

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Aviation Safety and Response

GEOS has been providing monitoring services for pilots with Satellite Emergency Notification Devices (S.E.N.D.) since 2007, with a considerable number of rescues in that distinguished history as well. GEOS Safety Solutions is also partnering with an undisclosed partner with the goal of further enhancing the Operational and Supportability Implementation System (OASIS) - ATC in Alaska. GEOS also offers support for the widest array of dedicated aviation and maritime monitoring systems in the world. In fact, we also are able to track flight variables, including those of commercial airlines for use in corporate and group travel solutions and packages. GEOS assists companies and groups track their aviation assets, provide for emergency notification and two-communications should the occasion arise. Did you know that the GEOS IERCC was featured on ABC's 2015 pilot of "In An Instant"? It was a story of a family that survived a horrific plane crash, and HELP was sent by GEOS.

Pilot walks away from engine-failure landing near McGrath

The engine on Will Johnson's float-equipped Cessna 206 cut out a thousand feet above the tree-studded tundra near McGrath.
The plane started losing altitude.
Johnson let it.
The 66-year-old commercial pilot knew enough to push the plane's nose down and let gravity take over.
He looked for a place to land in the rugged terrain near the headwaters of the Innoko River. Avoid ravines, Johnson told himself. Stay out of dense trees.
Among the stunted stands of black spruce, a thinner patch came into view. Johnson pointed the plane that way.
Trees slapped the Cessna's wings. The floats dragged in the tundra. The plane slowed, then stopped.
Johnson landed without a scratch. His motion-triggered Emergency Locator Transmitter didn't even go off. The plane's wing sustained some damage, but the fuselage and floats held just fine.
"The most difficult part was walking out," he said Thursday from Fairbanks. "It was a very gentle landing."
Johnson used an array of aviation-safety technology to alert authorities and family members to the Aug. 23 accident just before 5 p.m. Then, with the help of an Alaska Wildlife Trooper, he picked a route across spongy tundra to a dirt road less than two miles away. He was in McGrath by 10:30 that night.
Johnson credits everybody else for his success.
Brett Gibbens, the McGrath-based trooper, overflew the area and glimpsed a dirt mining road less than two miles west of the planes.
Gibbens relayed coordinates to Johnson via the plane's radio, according to the troopers. Then he landed in Takotna and drove a borrowed state Department of Transportation & Public Facilities truck to the place he figured the pilot would emerge. There the trooper made so much noise -- Gibbens couldn't be reached Thursday but Johnson thinks he was banging on the truck -- that Johnson homed in on the spot and popped out there.
"The guy was so professional and so amazing," Johnson said. "I can't say enough about what he did."
He also credited the "incredibly gracious" staff at the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge who contacted the troopers after Johnson called them on a satellite phone to let them know about his forced landing. Johnson had just dropped off a crew of refuge interns from a remote research camp when the accident happened.
And he raved about the "absolutely mind-boggling" DeLorme inReach SE that let him text a quick message -- "ENGINE FAILURE. ALL OK" -- and then tracked his movements, sending geographic points to his wife, Debbie, as she monitored his progress across the tundra. Source: Alaska Dispatch News

Saved by a satellite - New Communication tools aid wilderness rescue

When the Cessna 206 clipped the top of a tall pine tree moments after departing a rugged Idaho mountain airstrip, veteran flight instructor Art Lazzarini thought the stout, single-engine utility airplane would keep flying.
Then there was a second impact, and a third and fourth, and Lazzarini—who specializes in backcountry flight training and has logged more than 19,000 flight hours during 32 years flying the Mountain West—knew the airplane couldn’t stay aloft. The airplane’s owner was in the left seat and Lazzarini was administering a flight review in the right.
“I was aware of the whole trip down through the trees,” said Lazzarini, 61, who estimates that the towering pines surrounding Simonds Airstrip in remote Yellow Pine were about 75 feet tall. “I kept thinking, even after the first impact, ‘We’re going to make it.’ But even when I saw we weren’t, we never gave up. We kept flying all the way down.”
The airplane came to rest about three-quarters of a mile from the gravel airstrip near the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. The aircraft owner suffered minor injuries, but Lazzarini knew he had been badly hurt when the airplane fell. He smelled avgas leaking from the wreckage but there was no fire.
“I knew I was in pretty bad shape,” said Lazzarini, a small, wiry pilot with an irrepressible enthusiasm for flying and teaching. “My right wrist, hand, and thumb were broken, my right forearm was fractured, and my pelvis was broken. With the pilot’s assistance, I was able to get free of the airplane.”
It was just after 10 a.m. on July 14, 2009, a cool, clear day in the ruggedly beautiful, lightly traveled Frank Church Wilderness Area, and Lazzarini evaluated their chances for a quick rescue.
No one at home knew when the pair left Hailey, Idaho, that morning that they were going to land or take off from the unattended Simonds Airstrip. The two had added it to their itinerary only after landing or practicing approaches at several nearby airstrips. Also, it was likely that no one had seen them go down. They hadn’t filed an FAA flight plan, although several people knew their final destination that morning was McCall, Idaho, where Lazzarini was scheduled to teach, and the students and staff there were sure to notice his absence.
The airplane was equipped with a standard emergency locator transmitter (ELT) that likely was sending out a blaring signal on 121.5 MHz. But U.S. satellites had stopped monitoring that frequency five months earlier, and only local pilots flying above the sparsely populated region might hear it. Even then, a pilot hearing the signal could alert the Civil Air Patrol or other searchers, and they could track the signal to a 20-square-kilometer area. Since the 206 had fallen amid a thick stand of trees, it would be difficult to find.
But one thing they had in their favor was that Lazzarini and the aircraft owner both carried SPOT personal locators. They dug the orange, handheld devices from the wreckage; placed them on top of the airplane, and hit the emergency 911 buttons. Each PLB instantly sent an emergency message, with latitude and longitude coordinates, to an orbiting satellite that relayed their GPS position to a communications center in Houston, Texas.
A dispatcher in Houston started making telephone calls and sending e-mail messages to the people the two men had designated when they bought and activated their PLBs. One of those on Lazzarini’s designated list was Lori MacNichol, a veteran backcountry pilot, instructor, and owner of McCall Mountain/Canyon Flying Seminars, the place where Lazzarini had been scheduled to teach later that morning. Source: AOPA

While cellular phones have revolutionized communications in ways unthinkable even 20 years ago, these amazing devices (which now include tablets and a host of other gizmos) won't work where there are no cellular towers. For pilots, that means that an emergency in the remote Idaho Mountains, Alaskan wilderness or countless other desolate locales is still an emergency not fixable by whipping out a smartphone and dialing 911. That's where Iridium GO! comes in.
The clever Iridium GO! unit (the exclamation point is part of the brand) is the world's first truly global and portable satellite hot spot. It creates its own WiFi zone anywhere on the planet with a clear view of the sky and will allow up to five WiFi-equipped devices (cell phones, tablets, etc.) to hop onto the Internet for voice calls, web surfing, email, social media, etc. Because it uses satellites orbiting in space, Iridium GO! isn't dependent on terrestrial (Earth-based) networks. That means a broken fuel line in the middle of South Africa's Kalahari Desert really can be fixed with a quick phone call followed by some Facebook posting while you await rescue—all without using cell towers.
Source: Plane & Pilot

Guard rescues injured pilot after crash near Gulkana

A single-engine plane with four people aboard crashed in the Alphabet Hills 45 miles northwest of Gulkana Sunday, seriously injuring the pilot, authorities said.
The pilot appeared to have severe spinal injuries, according to the Alaska Air National Guard, which sent aircraft to rescue him and the three other men on board.
Alaska State Troopers identified the pilot as Robert Wesley Price, 30, of Anchorage. The other three, who received minor injuries, are Wayne Humbert, 30, of Anchorage; Brad Vassau, 23, of Anchorage; and Grant Smith, whose age and hometown were not given by the troopers.
Guard aircraft flew the four to Mat-Su Regional Hospital for treatment, troopers said.
The men were flying in a six-seat Cessna 185 to the Paxson area to go moose hunting but the plane crashed shortly after takeoff, troopers said.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Larry Lewis said he had no information on the cause of the crash yet. The aircraft is being retrieved.
Lewis said the Gulkana crash was one of five small-plane crashes in Alaska Friday, Saturday and Sunday. No injuries were reported in the others.
"Hunting season brings with it a lot of accidents," Lewis said.
The others, all single-engine small planes, were in South Naknek, near Coldfoot, in Fairbanks and across Cook Inlet from Soldotna.
For the Gulkana crash, troopers said they first were notified by a personal GPS emergency locating beacon called SPOT and registered to Humbert. Alaska Wildlife Troopers were first on the scene.
Lewis said he has a personal GPS like that too and they are affordable and seem to work pretty well on small planes. Source: KFOR.com

Delta flight redirected so woman can give birth

SALT LAKE CITY, UT.–Delta flight 2566 from San Francisco to Minneapolis was redirected to Salt Lake City to accommodate for a pregnant woman on the plane.
The woman started having “pregnancy complications,” so she was taken to University Hospital in SLC where she gave birth by way of emergency C-section, according to a hospital spokeswoman. Source: KFOR.com

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Aviation Safety Event Monitoring

GEOS has coordinated a number of rescues from aviation incidents, yet our services don't stop there. Our integrated systems provide for single button SOS alerting of an emergency situation, or other non-emergency alerts that are configurable by you, the user. GEOS can also monitor your flight from flight plan to wheels down, via tracking systems and equipment that comprise our complete solution.

Emergency Communications

Regardless of where you are, if you are involved in an emergency, you want to ensure that you can be in touch with help. With the GEOS supported S.E.N.D. devices, you have that capability, but it doesn't stop there. GEOS can integrate satellite voice communications into your customized aviation safety solution. Whether it's pay-as-you-go, or pre-paid, there is a solution for you.

Mobile Asset Tracking

With mobile asset tracking solutions from GEOS, you can be sure your assets are where they are supposed to be, when they are supposed to be. With our enterprise asset portal, you have a graphical view of all of your assets: people, places and things.

Local and Remote Monitoring

GEOS has monitoring solutions that range from smaller, easy-to-use monitoring systems for in-house monitoring, to full featured, enterprise level configuration, management, alerting, communications and incident management systems. In fact, not only do we know that one-size doesn't fit all, we have designed our systems to interoperate with each other, and systems from other providers.

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The team at GEOS have responded to tens of thousands of incidents in over 140 countries since 2007. We have excelled in our areas of expertise on the global stage and have the history to show for it. Our entire operations team is trained and certified by the U.S. Government in all operational areas.

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